Page 135 of When Ben Loved Tim

I can only hope that she will be too.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Prom fever is sweeping through our school. The upper classes anyway. I feel like a lowly freshman who doesn’t stand a chance of being asked and can’t attend on his own. No matter how bad I might want to, because I’d love to end high school by strolling into the ballroom with Tim on my arm. I can already imagine the look on everyone’s faces. The haters especially. But I wouldn’t do it for them. I simply want to go to the dance with the guy I love. If I was his girlfriend, there would be no question. It would be a given that we’d attend together.

I’m reminded of how easy such things are for straight people when I’m sitting in my economics class. Krista walks into the room carrying a single red rose, a folded note dangling from it, attached by a shiny blue ribbon. The stem is clutched close to her chest, the bloom near her nose like she’s on a smelling marathon. A girl in the row of desks next to mine notices.

“Did you get asked to prom?”

“Yes!” Krista cries with delight. “I didn’t think he would, but I kept waiting and hoping.”

“That’s wonderful!” the other girl says.

They aren’t friends, so the conversation ends there, sparing me from having to hear about another happy heterosexual couple. But I can’t help wondering who she ended up with, because Krista continues to glow throughout class. I watch her doodling in her notebook, occasionally covering her mouth with a dainty hand, as if to stop unadulterated joy from bubbling out. When the bell rings, I hop to my feet and walk past her desk. Before she closes her notebook to put it away, I see a sketched heart surrounding two sets of initials, the lines bold from being traced over and over again.

KN

TW

My stomach sinks. The bottom pair of initials belong to Tim. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence. I rack my brain, trying to remember what I overheard at the mall when Stacy and Tim were talking. She mentioned who Krista’s latest suitor was. Darryl, if I’m not mistaken. So it can’t be him. I need a yearbook,right now, to check for other suspects. Or I could just ask my boyfriend. That makes the most sense. I try to put the issue out of mind until given the chance.

Which comes sooner than I expect. Tim shows up at my front door shortly after I get home from school. That’s unusual, now that baseball is in season. He’s often busy after school. I’ve been sneaking into his house at night again, just so we can have some time together. Catching up is difficult when we have to worry about his parents overhearing us, so I do more pillow biting than pillow talking.

“Are your parents home yet?” Tim asks with a grin.

“You know they’re not,” I reply.

His grin gets bigger. So does my cock. We race up to my bedroom, kissing while undressing each other. We’ll talk afterwards, when it won’t matter if my parents are home. And yet, I can’t stop thinking about Krista’s rose. And the initials in her notebook.

Tim slips between my legs before shoving his tongue in my mouth. I try to lose myself in him. Which should be easy, especially when he presses his dick against my hole. It's been a while since we’ve done that. I keep fantasizing about it, loving how close it makes me feel to him.

“I wanna fuck you,” Tim pulls back to say.

I nod and kiss him while casting around for the bottle of lotion. When I find it and squirt some into my palm, the flowery scent reminds me of the rose again.

“Better open up,” Tim says, thrusting against me with a playful grin. “Or this battering ram is going to break down the gates!”

“Maybe we should use something else,” I say, rubbing my hands together to soak in the lotion.

“Why?” Tim asks. “Does it burn like the other kind did?”

“No,” I reply. We learned the hard way not to use anything that contains mint. “The smell is bothering me.”

“How about good old-fashioned spit?”

My hands reek of roses. I’m not even hard anymore.

He’s searching my eyes for an answer. I stare back, wishing I could read his mind, because even after all this time together, he continues to elude me. I’ll have to ask. In my own way. I watch his face carefully when saying, “Krista got asked to prom today.”

I see a flash of panic before Tim sighs and rolls off. “That was fast,” he grumbles. “Who told you?”

“You just did!” I sit up so I can glare down at him. “What the hell? Why would you ask her?”

Tim rubs his eyes while groaning. “You know why!”

“I really don’t!”

He moves his hands away, his expression weary. “My mom expects me to go with her.”